Justice League: Of Myth & Magic
by Mx4
Summary: A child is born to the sorceress Circe. He is meant to be her greatest disciple, the weapon that will finally do away with the amazons entirely. But as always, the threads of fate knot and twist in strange ways that makes the gods laugh at those who plan. (Male OC, Diana Prince centric, will take inspiration from most all iterations of JL)


John Makori was going to die.

He'd known this physically at ten when some Apophis worshipping magi had attacked Westwind Academy and he'd been about to be devoured by a skeletal Naga before Summoner Murlire's timely intervention.

He'd known this intellectually when his thirteenth birthday was spent helping his best friend Karen search through the Westwind Academy archive for references to mind control spells and magically empowered pacts in order to try and sever the connection between Tristan Carson and the people they only knew as The Shades even as he wondered whether Tristan was worth saving at all.

But now?

Now he knew it viscerally.

The desert wind howled like hungry wolves in the night, the stars glimmering in the blackened sky as a sharp contrast to the fires burning within and without Westwind. The senior Magi had fought alongside the students against the invaders: their only backup the remaining members of the Coatl Cult. So much blood, so much misery and suffering.

And for what?

Squabbling children who never grew out of their resentment and grudges when they reached adulthood passing their hatreds and bruised egos to the unknowing children who came after them, children whom they raised to never know any better.

Pieces of his classmate Tommy were still dripping down the remains of the cracked and broken library wall he'd been blasted into pieces against. He thought he could hear the lycanthrope Luca fighting against the feral pack they'd brought to occupy her and the others like her in the school but couldn't say for certain. All the fights were radiating outward, almost as if the combatants could sense the end was near and so were trying to tie up the loose ends of the fights so that they might be able to meet up with the tattered remnants of their own factions to take down the potential winner.

It seemed that one way or another, Westwind wouldn't be bouncing back from this.

Yet even now, so very close to the end he could taste the ashes of their funeral pyre on his tongue, John had always thought (more wildly hoped really) that Karen would do what she always did and pull something out of her ass to save them the way she had so consistently before. But that was looking less and less likely as she refused to go all out against Tristan. Whether or not he was magically compelled to do this really was immaterial at this point, at least in John's personal opinion, considering how much death and destruction had resulted from her refusal to give up on the boy she claimed to have fallen in love with.

As he looked to the night sky, he couldn't help but notice that the dog stars, Orion's belt as well as parts of the Taurus and Gemini constellations were all visible with the half moon near dead center in them. There was only one time of year when those constellations could form such a circle.

'_Winter Solstice._' His mind absently supplied, his many tutoring sessions with his student tutor Dana having yielded more factoids than simple homework minutiae.

'_Did you know John,_' She'd asked him once, her brown eyes bright with joy over finding some new piece of information about this world he'd become a part of and she'd been so eager to include him in.

_'That the use of Merlin, Circe and the other ancient names as an exclamation came about because ancient wizards wanted to avoid taking the name of the what they believed to be the source of magic in vain?'_ He'd asked what they believed to be the source of magic. Dana had spoken only a name.

_'Hecate.'_

She'd then told him quite a bit about ancient greek myths and how it related to wizarding beliefs. She told of their belief of how Hecate had survived two celestial conflicts: the war between the Titans and the Primordials as well as the war between the Titans and the Olympians. How her power had been so great not even the Sisters of Fate dared try to cut her thread of life. How her name could be invoked as a blessing or a curse yet none could control what form her answering of the call would take. And so it was deemed best to avoid her name altogether until it passed from utterance entirely.

He looked to see Tristan standing over Karen, a look of mingled resignation and resolution in his face. He couldn't tell what they were saying, only that Karen was reaching her hand out beseechingly, as though trying to call him back to the Academy that had been his home for so many years.

If ever there was a time for desperate measures to be considered it was now.

_ 'Hecate, hear my plea.'_ John said mentally, struggling to stand upright by inches even as a flash of light from Tristan's hands and Karen's pained cries filled his ears. He ignored his surroundings in favor of concentrating on forcing his uncooperative body to obey him with the ease only one who knows the end has come could achieve.

He could see that Tristan's movements were slightly agitated, as though he didn't want Karen to keep resisting him like this but wouldn't hesitate to make things worse if she refused to give up.

If he hadn't been carefully gathering his magic as he stood on shaking legs, Jason didn't think he would've detected the small electric current that fizzled through his flesh: causing the hairs on his arms to stand slightly on end.

_'I don't want to be saved. I don't expect to live. I only want Tristan gone. I want the evil he serves wiped from this world. Whatever price you ask, I will pay. This I vow to you on my life as John Makori.'_ He thought, not certain whether such an ancient power would want him to word it in a more arcane manner but also equally certain that it didn't matter for hippogriff shit at this point.

He moved forward: one slow shuffling step becoming another as the magic building inside lent him strength he knew he didn't possess himself after the hours of fighting. This was when he knew Hecate had truly heard him. Nice to know he wasn't completely insane before he died here.

As he picked up speed, he heard a bit of what Tristan was saying to Karen.

"It didn't have to be this way Karen! I didn't want it to-" He was saying as John came closer, his green eyes narrowed angrily as he heard more of that self-pitying crap than he'd ever cared to from both Tristan himself and from Karen when she tried to argue for saving him.

Enough was enough.

"What's-" Tristan wondered aloud as he only started to turn toward John even as he slammed into his side, their impact together echoing in the air like a thunderclap. But the magic wouldn't allow John's momentum to be arrested by something as minor as a larger human body.

John wrapped his arms around Tristan's middle even as his charge built such energy that it started to warp the air around their bodies and let off flashes of strangely colored light in the dark. Tristan hadn't hesitated to fire off the same spell he'd used on Karen not moments before, one that by rights felt like it should've broken the bones in John's back. But instead of stopping John, it only became absorbed by the magic coursing through his now suffused body even as he kept running, plowing them through what had once been magnificent natural rock pillars on the terrace of the school's rooftop.

"What are you doing?! Stop, stop!" Shouted Tristan as if his words held any meaning to John.

This arrogant, self-pitying jerk who'd led Karen around by the nose and then claimed that he cared for her even after he'd betrayed them all. There was nothing he could say that held any meaning anymore.

John had no words that the likes of him deserved to hear, only closing his eyes as the edge of the building came into sight. With one last mighty heave of his legs, he leapt as he never had before, their energy building more and more even as their ascent reached its crescent and the two men raced toward the unforgiving desert sand like a comet.

Tristan was screaming denials and fearful gibberish by this point, but to John it was slurred nonsense as time seemed to slow to a crawl. Almost as though he were having an out of body experience, he knew that within the next second they would achieve impact and so would both be gone. Only a sad smile crossed his lips even as the last thought to cross his mind was three simple words.

_'Goodbye my friend.'_

It felt as though the earth itself was shaken by the impact to those who were still fighting in Westwind. And then the sand rose. As it crested like an oil spout it became a burning hurricane, an unknown source of heat at its base turning some of the lower sand bits into nearly invisible needles of glass. Those who'd been fighting could only watch horror struck as many of the bodies of the silent dead and the wailing survivors were sucked into the vortex before all of it collapsed in on itself. In its wake, it left only the crackling of the still burning fires and the dense heavy silence that marked only the mourning and shock of those who were left amid the carnage of death.

-/-

Circe watched the sun glisten off the peaceful waters gently lapping the shore as she reflected on the life she lived on the island of Aeaea. She ruled her own personal kingdom with her beast men creations and the few scant people she'd never bothered to transform after her cousins the sirens lured them to the island. She was very much a reclusive hermit as the people knew better than to bother her for anything so petty as their problems or lives. She was the most devoted and powerful follower of the Titaness Hecate, her magical power near unequaled for centuries.

And yet…

And yet she was unhappy.

Her father Helios, the once titan of the sun, had long since passed his mantle and his life to the Olympian Apollo, choosing to fade into oblivion after the second war of the heavens. Her oceanid mother was long gone as well. Her cousins might become more tolerable in a few more centuries when they finally ceased mourning the loss of they and their daughter's wings to Demeter's curse since the Goddess of the Harvest was unlikely to change her mind any time in the foreseeable future.

(And when they stopped showing off that for all her magical power, she'd never be able to sing as sweetly as they could. But that was more personal preference than necessity.)

The one man she'd ever shown any interest in having by her side could only think of getting back to his mortal wife.

She sighed to herself, turning her back on the bright sun and returning to the path that would take her back to her sprawling home amid the enchanted wood of Aeaea. As she traveled the path, she came by beastmen whose combined human and animal features ranged from lion to panther, bear to wolf. All her strongest and most loyal protectors who never wanted for game or challenge through the magic of the island.

Soon enough her automatic traversing of the path brought her before her home: a sprawling building with one main hall and three wings that led off from it. It had echoed well enough with the sound of merriment and laughter when the crew captained by brave Odysseus had partaken of her enchanted food and wine, yet now was silent but for the times she spent in the north wing worshipping her patron Titaness and experimenting or perfecting aspects of her spellcraft.

Much as she didn't like to admit it, what she wanted more than anything else was a legacy. Immortal or not, she didn't want to remain alone for the rest of her existence. Was that not why the titans and the gods created men and beast and continued interacting with them even as they knew they would outlive them all? For that knowledge of kinship, however brief? For that ever changing yet constant mark of their existence that was entirely apart from themselves?

She brought herself in supplication before the alter of Hecate. Only the best had been afforded for her goddess. From the pale marble forming her image making her skin look the color of the bluest moon carved by Pygmalion himself; his craftsmanship such that her graven image appeared ready to breathe at any moment. To the black toga woven by Arachne that draped over her form like a shawl of shadows covered much of her statue's otherwise nude body with a few glimpses outside of it. In her right hand, positioned perfectly before her midsection and close to her body, she held a small carved box with intricate runic patterns whose glowing and shifting would've been painful to mortal eyes: its workmanship the last thing Medea had created before she disappeared into the mists of time. In her aloft left hand, she held a bronze torch bracket that crackled with green balefire that had remained strong through the years Circe had fed it her magic until it was essentially a second source of power for the enchantments and spells that powered most of if not all of Aeaea's more mundane and practical magics.

She knelt before it, her mind still reflecting on her solitude as she prayed to Hecate to answer her so that they may delve into the mysteries of the mystic arts once again.

Instead of her lady's voice answering there came a sharp stabbing pain in her abdomen.

Circe gasped at the sudden sensation, her right hand instinctively gripping her stomach as the pain intensified. She gritted her teeth against it: not knowing whether this was the Titaness testing her or merely showing her power so that she remembered who was the master and who remained the student. Her mistress could be kind as a gentle summer breeze or wrathful as a hurricane. And though she remained her most devoted (and to be fair only living) pupil, she could still never entirely predict her lady's mood and how it would affect the use and learning of her powers. The pain intensified to near unbearable levels as Circe was forced to curl in on herself like a dog being beaten, both hands clutching her stomach as she wondered why she was being forced to feel such pain that death would've been welcome relief.

And then as abruptly as it had begun it ended.

Panting as though she'd run the length of the world, she slowly brought herself to her knees again, never leaving her supplicated stance.

Hecate's voice echoed in the silence of the North Wing; simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Rejoice my dear student. For I have heard your heart's desire. In nine turns of the moon, a soul that gave itself to me in another world shall be born anew to you in this one. He shall be your disciple and your son. Your blessing and your burden to bear."

Circe couldn't help but gasp, her eyes coming up to look upon the stone visage of her mistress as her right hand instinctively flew to her abdomen again, settling upon the space she knew her womb to reside.

"My lady Hecate?" She asked, the amazed question strong in her voice even as she did not know how to express it properly.

"Consider it an answer and a test young Circe. You have proven yourself a faithful and devoted follower. You have filled the role of student admirably. Now I wish to see how you respond to the role of teacher. And how you rise or fall in answer to the challenge…it shall determine the final stage of my teachings to you." Came the ominous promise.

Circe bowed her head again, eyes gleaming with speculation and eagerness.

"As my lady Hecate commands." She answered softly, mind already racing at the possibilities and a smile breaking upon her lips at the thought of how much more her power could grow once the child was born.

It was one thing to welcome such a blessing, quite another to live through it of course.

Circe had known that childbirth and pregnancy always changed the woman who went through them. She'd seen enough of that with her cousins the Sirens when they bore their daughters and began raising the babies. Had even been given testimony by Odysseus as to how harrowing the experience had been simply to hear from the next room when the clever hero had felt like reminiscing about his life back on Ithica.

But she could never have prepared to know what it was for someone of her power to bear progeny.

At first it had not been anything so arduous. A sickness of the stomach that persisted for the early part of most every day, easily dealt with by a restoration incantation. A shortening of what had already been an easily triggered temper; so much so that even her most loyal beastmen soon learned to give her home at least a league worth of berth, least they unwittingly be caught in her wrath when one of the cramps or wild mood swings took her.

But by far the most chilling for her was the effect upon her magical powers.

At first it had been an experience akin to euphoria as she discovered her powers had grown to a new level of potency. What had once required an incantation only needed a gesture on her part.

At first.

But as the pregnancy progressed, the change came. She found that she couldn't fully control how her magic fluctuated and flowed as more and more of it became absorbed and channeled into her son who would be.

This was perfectly demonstrated when she attempted to cast a simple scrying spell and ended up turning an entire wall of her bedroom into a sheet of what appeared to be a cross between a kaleidoscope and a mirror. The refracted light gave her such a headache she had to leave the room with all haste least she empty her stomach of everything she'd eaten yesterday before she'd even had breakfast.

As more of her magic was filtered through her unborn child, she found that it became too dangerous to try and use her spells to attempt relieving the pains in her joints and her back. Her breasts swelled and became as tender as her aching joints to the point that near the end of the eighth month, it caused some pain even to breathe enough to raise her chest.

The ninth turn of the moon had come and was almost passed when she felt the pains.

It had felt nearly identical to the pains she'd had the day her lady Hecate had conceived her child that she awoke in her bed half thinking that her patron goddess had descended to speak with her. The water that had soaked through her bedding had rapidly convinced her otherwise.

Pain. Pain for two straight days as she screamed herself hoarse, her magic wreaking havoc through her bedroom and leaving her the eye of the chaotic maelstrom as she pushed and pushed to bring her baby into the world.

As the sun set upon the second day and night fell, she at brought him into her arms bloody and crying: first breath drawn and expelled to signal the start of a new life.

Circe could not help the gasp that escaped her at the sight of a caul adorning the upper half of his head. The film was fully covering his eyes and the top of his skull as though it were a crown, a part of her mind racing at the implications of her son being not only a conception of her lady Hecate, but a caulbearer as well.

But that would have to wait until he was more than a few moments old. With careful tenderness, Circe used the torn remains of her sleep shift to clean the blood and caul off his small, delicate little body as he at last quieted down and opened his uncovered eyes to reveal blue green orbs that reminded her of the sparkling waters of her home's private grotto.

Even as her sweat dried upon her body and she forcibly severed then tied the umbilical cord, she placed the caul in a small wooden bowl atop her nightstand, magical knowledge urging at her to preserve it as soon as possible. As she took one of her togas to create a makeshift wrap for him, her left arm kept him close to her breast even as he began to feed, his hunger greater than his fright at the new existence he had been thrust into.

She waited until he drank what appeared to be his fill, trying to sense if her magic was settled yet. It continued to fluctuate even as he fed from her, letting her know that it would be some time before she could fully trust it again. Displeasing, but most likely worth it if her preliminary sense of her newborn son was any indication as to his potential power.

Walking through the halls of her home on shaky legs with crusted sweat forming a layer over her tired and naked body, she made her way to the alter of her lady Hecate. As she came before the alter, she could sense the air had stilled around it as though her lady awaited her.

Carefully she knelt before the alter as her son's slightly unfocused eyes tried to take in what he could in the dim light of the moon that barely filtered through.

"He is already so strong my lady." She remarked, taking in the innocent features of her son as she tried to reconcile them with the already impressive magical core he had developed.

"As though the offspring of my student would be anything less." Came her goddess's answer.

A few sparks leapt from the balefire in the torch bracket landed at the statue's feet, gathering together and burning more and more until there was a smaller handful of balefire closer to her supplicated form. Her goddess truly was invested in this child, to manifest her power so strongly and so obviously in front of her student.

"Bring him closer my student." She said, her voice coming directly from the smaller crackling fire.

Circe obliged without hesitation, the honor of her goddess taking such a personal interest in her squirming legacy the most potent feeding her ego could potentially receive. With appropriate reverence, she brought her son's body close to the flame as his young eyes beheld the bright light. He wriggled and murmured in her arms, but they sounded (to her new mother's ears anyway) to be sounds of returning hunger rather than sounds of discomfort or fear.

She was proven right as his mouth returned to her breast to seek more nourishment, her magic connecting her to him in an almost unnoticeable trickle as well whilst he fed upon her milk.

"What do you intend to name him student?" Came the question.

Circe's smile was at once beatific and frightening. For in it was her joy, her triumph, her plans and all her hopes for the future both virtuous and villainous.

"It seems only right to name him in your honor my lady." She answered absently as her right hand stroked his angelically soft skin with the back of her fingers.

"I expect great things from you my precious Hecataeus." She proclaimed in a soft whisper.

"Terrible some may say. But great none the less." She finished as she leaned down to kiss his forehead.

The first years of her son's life had been trying for Circe: both as a magic practitioner and as a new mother. Figuring out how to care for such a helpless being that couldn't even hold its own head up was a task and a half, not to mention her only experience with young creatures before this had been raising young bulls to be sacrificed to the gods or young birds to act as conduits and messengers for her lady's power when the mood struck the mysterious titaness of magic. For before her son's birth, it was a rare occasion indeed that Lady Hecate directly spoke to her without the puppeteering the statue or a reanimated animal.

But even aside from her lady's unusual interest in her new child, Circe had discovered a few things she would not have suspected in the process of raising him.

She'd discovered that her cousins the sirens were happy to help her look after him once she'd managed to swallow her pride enough to have them come to her home within the forest. And through their care and affection as they crooned soothing songs for him when he was upset, she'd found it brought an upswell of complex emotion that was equal parts relief and annoyance for her to see her son gurgle happily and flail his chubby, uncoordinated arms as he tried to use his pudgy little fingers to grasp at his musically giggling cousins rather than his mother.

She'd discovered as her son began to grow older and toddle his first tentative steps in the forest surrounding their home that the more aggressive of the beastmen could only be relied upon to watch over him from a distance without frightening the poor boy to tears. She'd discovered that the one who was the most surprisingly adept at looking after him was an agile but gentle fox beastman she hadn't seen in so long that she'd simply assumed the others had killed him during one of their juvenile fighting hunts: a tradition they sometimes partook in to cull the weaker of their number and to keep their skills sharp.

The fox kept her son entertained with games of hide and seek or tag, oftentimes allowing young Hecataeus to come so close as to believe he would catch him, only to dance just out of range with a barking sort of laugh that seemed to drive her son's determination ever higher. He always managed to tire the young boy out long before anything could happen and returned him to the mistress of the island with nary a word of complaint or conversation, choosing instead to reserve his voice for when he needed to warn, taunt or even playfully tease his young charge.

Though often out of her direct sight of her home, watching their antics together though scrying glass amused Circe; something that didn't often happen with the beastmen of her forest. And so, since the foxman himself didn't appear to remember who he had been before becoming a beastman of her forest, she had taken to referring to the wily watcher by the name of Alopex: a name meant to honor the uncatchable vixen that had once terrorized the countryside of Thebes and become enshrined in stone after being set upon by the inescapable hound Laelaps. Which of course had prompted said watcher to refer to her son by the nickname Little Laps. This naturally made Hecataeus pout and try to catch his quarry all the harder; if only to prove that his furry guardian was not nearly so uncatchable as his name implied.

Though all these experiences, she'd discovered something else: the amount of pleasure she derived from seeing her son's innocent emerald gaze as he grew whilst playing and satisfying his curiosity of the world around him at her feet was only matched by the sorrow and rage the thought of him suffering or in pain could induce in her. She knew he could not remain a child forever, could not avoid having him grow older any more than she could prevent the passage of time itself. It was these thoughts spurred her to seek out her distant cousin, the spirit of the river that flowed through all the world both above and below, Styx. She did not seek a passive baptism as Thetis had for Achilles once upon a time. No: Circe was far too knowledgeable of true power to be satisfied with so basic a thing.

What she sought was no less than Styx's personally bestowed blessing for her son. The titaness who controlled what the Olympus worshippers sometimes called the River of Souls was reluctant. But still she agreed so long as two conditions were met: That Circe and her son would swear to never seek harm upon the boatman Charon and that they would never allow harm to come to her domain and all who dwelt within it. Circe had agreed, knowing the advantages of having Styx's favor far outweighed what measly costs she had put upon them. As the blue eyed, grey haired Titaness bathed a squirming but trusting Hecataeus in the impenetrable waters that bore her name while intoning in a primal language that had existed before mankind was a thought in the mind of any Olympian or Titan, Circe couldn't help the almost predatory grin that came to her face.

The Olympians had been quite harsh in their punitive measures against the titans whom they had usurped control of the ancient world from. And yet they had not been nearly strong enough to corral and control them all. Hell, they hadn't even been strong enough to prevent the titaness Aphrodite from being named as an Olympian simply because the men were too besotted with the beauty and power she commanded, and the women were too weak and quarrelsome to cast her out.

The Olympian gods sought to appear to be all-powerful, as all beings of divine power were prone to doing. But none could even begin to claim such a thing in truth until they had survived attempts to test that power as lady Hecate had. She knew she would be tested in such a way by her lady soon enough, that it would come hand in hand with her lady testing her son's young but already growing strength. And when her lady did, she knew in the core of her heart that their passing of their shared test would shake the foundations of Olympus itself.

Circe wouldn't have suppressed the thrill of anticipation in her breast at that knowledge even if she'd been capable of doing so.

-/-

Hippolyta, queen of the amazons, was a woman intimately familiar with suffering.

She had suffered many an ache and pain to become first a great warrior than the queen of the amazons as she defeated all who had enough support of the people to challenge her in the ring of combat.

Her hair dark as night and eyes blue as the sky, she was a great beauty to behold in the eyes of many a scholar and a solider. But never had she found one worthy of her attentions.

Until Heracles.

As queen of the amazons, word had already reached her ears as to the nature of the labors one of the patron goddesses of the amazons had assigned the most renowned demigod son of Zeus. She knew that she would be expected to keep the girdle, to make him hurt for trying to escape her lady Hera's judgement.

But when he came before her, the strongest man in all the world who was barely holding himself together by throwing his all into these tasks, she knew she could not stand in his way. And so she gave the girdle willingly: unable to bring herself to prolong suffering where it was not necessary. He'd lain with her for that comfort and she'd conceived a son by him.

Thrax had been a beautiful boy. But with his birth came the wrath of Hera. He was stolen from her arms and given to Ares to be raised as a harbinger of war. Hippolyta's heart had suffered greatly at this punishment for her kindness, but she had kept it within herself, knowing she must never show weakness before her people.

All knowledge of her son was lost from the amazons save for Hippolyta herself: Hera's consequence for defying the Queen of Olympus's will. And so when Ares incited war between the city states of Greece and brought death to the doorstep of Themyscira with Thrax leading the charge, only Hippolyta could hear the screaming anguish in her heart as she sheared her son's head from his body with the unfaltering arm only a true warrior may possess.

Weary of the conflict and knowing Ares would never leave them be as they were favored by Athena, Hippolyta beseeched the goddesses of Olympus to let her people recover away from the strife and chaos of man's world. To not let the amazons suffer so much when already the world forced them to hurt so for the crime of being born a woman.

Hera, Hestia, Demeter, Athena and Artemis all acquiesced. They created an island paradise exclusively for the amazons to reside upon and made them immortal so that they could recover their purity of spirit free from the ravages of time and death.

But Hippolyta's heart still grieved for her losses. Grieved for the lost love that could never be between herself and Heracles. Grieved for the lost son whose spilled blood would forever stain her hands. Grieved for the lost sisters-in-arms who had breathed their last upon the battlefield so that Lady Hera could teach her to never countermand the dictates of Olympus.

She wanted to find comfort in the voluntary exile of her people. And while many had found it, she herself could take no solace now that she had nothing but time to ruminate upon her mistakes and the tragedies that had come of her decisions.

She begged the goddess Hestia for an answer. For in her hearth the fires of Apollo could sometimes be seen and so kindle the sparks of the future. The answer she was given was that she desired a purpose to move forward; proof that new life could spring from old suffering.

The goddesses wanted Hippolyta to give a champion to the amazons. Hippolyta wanted the goddesses to give her hope.

And thus, out of the wet sand upon the shores of Themyscira, with the mark of her blood adorning its forehead and brought before the hearth in the temple of Hestia, came her new daughter.

Diana. Black of hair and blue of eye. She was a beautiful child. She was also a loud child.

As Hippolyta shed tears of joy while cradling the new life within her arms, she vowed that her daughter would not suffer as she had. That she would not know the pain of forsaking her duty. And that with her ascension to becoming a worthy champion of the Amazons, perhaps Hippolyta herself might at last find some comfort in all the darkness that had come before.

Diana would prove to be quite the rambunctious child for Hippolyta. Physically energetic and never shy about letting her displeasure or happiness be known. Hippolyta had been a mother once before, but Thrax hadn't even been a day or two old before Hera had taken him from her arms. And so it felt like she was learning to be a parent for the first time, though admittedly her position had always made it as simple as snapping her fingers to find someone who could help her care for the young girl.

It had helped of course that none of the amazons were children themselves, the absolute youngest of their number being the once twenty-four-year-old Alexa.

The white-haired old philosopher trapped in a copper haired young woman's body as Hippolyta sometimes thought of her. There was some muttering that Diana would be better off hanging about with Alexa's decade older sister Artemis, no doubt fueled by the common knowledge of Alexa's cowardice upon what would prove to be Themyscira's last field of battle that had almost cost their sister-in-arms Persephone an eye.

The fact that Alexa had used some rudimentary knowledge of magic she'd gleaned from those musty old books and tablets most of the amazons cared nothing for in order to restore Persephone's eye to functionality if not beauty seemed to be lost upon them.

But while Hippolyta was more understanding than most of Alexa's personality and quirks than most, she did wish the girl had proven more of a warrior so that she could feel safe entrusting Diana's safety and full education to her.

As it was, Diana had already started gravitating toward Artemis, who many regarded as one of their greatest warriors second only to Hippolyta herself.

She took to her lessons with the sword and spear with a grace and fluidity that Hippolyta did not remember possessing herself when she'd been a young amazon. But perhaps that was to be expected of a child created and forged by the powers of the goddesses themselves rather than born purely of human flesh.

Diana ran with the grace of Artemis's golden stag and soon took to lifting boulders her own size around the island in order to test her strength. Though she was young, it was clear her power and prowess would only increase with age.

As she grew Hippolyta saw in Diana the potential to be a truly legendary warrior and a great boon to the goddesses of Olympus. And she knew she must demonstrate for Diana how to show proper respect to the patron goddesses who had allowed the Amazons to life such a long life before she got too old to appreciate such a lesson.

A bit young perhaps, but it wasn't as though her duties to her people and those who looked after them would allow her to remain ignorant as to what would be expected to them to show their loyalty to Olympus.

So it was that she'd undertaken the raising of the calf with Diana.

The cow had been raised by Diana personally for several years. She had cared for it, fed it, even given it the name of Harmonia for how peacefully docile it was. The cow in turn grew to love and trust and love Diana such that it would amble toward her whenever she was within its eyesight, knowing that Diana would have a bright smile and happy laugh for it along with some sweet hay or green grass.

But the time inevitably came for the ceremony of offering. Harmonia had grown into a beautiful cow with a pure white coat and eyes the color of a cloudless sky. Hippolyta knew that it would prove a fruitful sacrifice for the gods.

She brought Diana before the alter of Olympus: the grand marble slab that was meant to draw all of Olympus's attention to their offering. She had explained many a time to Diana how sacrifices had to be made to the gods so that they could be satisfied and give their blessings. That without them the amazons may well have perished entirely long ago. But it had not eased the pain in the girl's watery blue eyes as she begged her mother to reconsider, to see if perhaps there was another cow who could've been sacrificed to show the gods their devotion.

Hippolyta could only shake her head minutely.

"We all must sacrifice in order to do what is best for all. That is why we sue for peace when we are at war Diana; so that we inflict no unnecessary suffering or loss. But how can we presume to tell the gods what is necessary when it is only by their grace that we live as we do?"

The queen of the amazons had looked out over the bustling life that made an unsteady hum just outside the privacy of the royal temple, her mind reflecting on everything and nothing at once. She quickly returned her attention to her daughter's watering blue eyes.

"We agreed to live here under their divine rule Diana. And thus, we must live by all their divine laws, else we would expect everything from them while giving nothing in return. And neither god nor man can abide such naked selfishness even for a short time."

Diana had cried, her tears rolling down her cheeks like boulders in a landslide and tried once again to plead for Harmonia's life, but Hippolyta refused her again despite the ache in her own heart that wished she did not have to strip her daughter of this part of her innocence so young.

Even as Diana quietly sniffled, even as she quickly drew the knife across her beloved cow's unsuspecting throat, Hippolyta could not and did not shy away from the pain it caused her to see her daughter's sorrow. Hard as it was, the sooner she could become accustomed to the sorrows that awaited her, the better off she would be.

If only it were so easy to convince herself when the pale moonlight of the lady Artemis's chariot had fallen upon Themyscira while she tossed and turned sleeplessly within her silken sheets.

-/-

AN: An introduction to the new version of the story that was originally posted under Justice League Crossovers until it was rightfully pointed out that there was barely any overt elements of the other fictional work being crossed over with and so might as well be an OC story. So...first time trying to write an OC story. Here's hoping I can put off descending into suedom as long as I can.


End file.
